For $40, those who couldn't be astronauts see Mars One as their chance.

Aaron Hamm, an assistant hotel engineer who deals with HVAC, cooling systems, and maintenance, lacks the traditional qualifications to be an astronaut. But that doesn't mean he wants to stay on Earth. "I felt… I was discouraged as a child [from becoming an astronaut] just because of how unbelievably competitive it is,” Hamm told Ars. “I’m a very intelligent person and I’m driven to try and achieve my dreams but, at the same time, I felt like it was an really unrealistic goal to try and pursue. As smart as I am, there's always plenty of people that are smarter.”

Hamm, an Ars forum user by the name of Quisquis, has just applied for the private Mars One colony program. For him, a large part of the appeal is that the program seeks a different type of astronaut.

Aaron Hamm, would-be Mars colonist.

“I think that the Mars One mission and the idea of going somewhere that you're not coming back from for life… that's different than the general astronaut program,” he said. Hamm also emphasized his own pioneer spirit, which he will need if accepted—there’s no return journey planned for Mars One colonists.

A new horizon

Mars One is a private space mission that hopes to send a group of people to Mars in a decade and leave them there to foster the first human colony. It has received endorsement and support from the likes of Gerard ’t Hooft, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. But it has also been criticized on several counts, including treating a serious life-threatening scenario as a reality show for the purposes of monetization and seeking funding while being glib about nearly all the practical details.

Before applicants even get to see the application, they must pay an application fee of around $38 USD (the price varies depending on country of residence). They fill out a public-facing profile and answer several private questions about achievements and awards, incidents that have frightened or stressed them out and how they dealt with them, personality types they find difficult to handle, and how they deal with cultures other than their own. To date, 30,000 other Red Planet hopefuls have applied.

“I want to see the sun rise over a completely new horizon, in a completely new sky. I think that's worth any price,” wrote Erica Meszaros, another Mars One applicant, in her personal essay.

Meszaros is a software developer by trade and interned with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. She states that astronauts are traditionally chosen “from the Air Force” or—more recently, with the success of $200,000 per flight projects like Virgin Galactic—from “those with deep pockets.”

Part of Mars One’s pitch has been that much of the technology for traveling to and maintaining residence on Mars already exists; it’s just a matter of marshaling resources and initiative to get there. Both Hamm and Meszaros echoed this sentiment. Despite being publicly vague on the details, Mars One leaders maintain that they know the cost of the mission ($6 billion) and that it can all be assembled and launched in 10 years.

All applicants make a video as part of their public facing profile discussing, in brief, why they want to or are suited for a mission to Mars. "I have a great sense of humor, so I really get along with everybody," said Francisco, a 32 year-old Argentinian man who works in "the commercial area at a plastic containers factory."

"I’ve got a feeling that I don’t belong here, but out there,” said Anders, a 51-year-old Swedish man who has the most popular profile on the site. “What makes me the perfect candidate? Well, I’m single. I’m flexible."

"I believe that the challenge that I’m putting up with everybody… If anybody can challenge me with the knowledge and all the things that I can do, then I give up, but if not, I would like to be the first one to go,” said Vasile Sofroni, a 54-year-old Romanian man with the second most popular profile.

The technical viability of the project has been repeatedly called into question, though detailed critiques are hard to come by because the project is so vague (the New York Timessummed up the general feeling in a recent article that talked about the "significant skepticism" that Mars One "has raised in some quarters").

Critics also criticized Mars One for its attempt to turn the trip into an extravagant and potentially dangerous reality TV show. The first round of the application process allows people to vote on applicants based on their public profiles to push them through to the next qualifying round (though there is not, per the current design, any public involvement going forward).

Erica Meszaros, another would-be Mars colonist.

But neither Hamm nor Meszaros see themselves as fame seekers. “I don’t, right now, have a strategy for progressing, other than trying to get across my passion… for this endeavor,” Meszaros told me. Hamm said that he has been pushing his application and name out on sites like Facebook (“my friends are already a little tired of it”) but notes he has “never applied to another reality show.”

Worth the risk

By now, Mars One has proven that there are sufficient number of people who don't need to know any technical details for about the potential chance to live on Mars. Tens of thousands have plunked down cash to throw their would-be astronaut helmets into the ring without needing virtually any concrete information.

But should space travel push come to reality entertainment shove, aren’t applicants at least a little afraid of—how to put this delicately—either a fiery space death or a frigid Martian death?

“The purpose that I would be pursuing is so much greater than myself,” Hamm said. “I think the benefit to humanity is overwhelming of those fears.”

Promoted Comments

I'm kind of curious what the public is expecting to see at this point... everyone panning the program seems to expect that they should be able to see blueprints and budgets or something.

Even if Mars One executes exactly as they plan to, no one who isn't intimately involved in the project is going to see that level of detail.

And I think everyone should take a moment to remember that 10 years before we landed on the Moon, we couldn't even launch a rocket into space...

That's a fair response, honestly. Ten years prior to Apollo 11's landing, NASA was a fledgling agency and Project Mercury was still a few months from officially kicking off.

The skepticism from a lot of folks is good old fashioned Internet truculence, yes. However, remember also that at its height, Project Apollo and its associated programs directly or indirectly employed about 400,000 people and consumed 2.2% of the total federal budget (one source, though there are many others). A lot of people are viewing Mars One's goals through that lens: if it took that many billions to get twelve people to the moon, how much more will it take to get to Mars?

Our perception of space travel is colored by past missions. Mars One's estimate of a $6B mission seems ludicrously low in light of what other government-funded space agencies across the world have spent to accomplish far smaller goals. Costs will be lower than a government-run mission for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the notoriously porky nature of manned space flight (that army of 400,000 civil servants and contractors spread across North America didn't come cheap), but $6B still seems a little light. Looking at their technology page, they anticipate saving huge amounts of capital by operating as payloads on Falcon Heavy launch vehicles (which should, if all goes according to plan, be man-rated by design) and by using Dragon capsules in a variety of roles. Good for them. This is obviously predicated on Falcon Heavy being brought into operation on time, and solving the issue of actually landing on Mars (there's no method so far that's been tried that'll work for living cargo, for one reason or another, at least not without serious compromises in payload). This means they still will need to finance multiple Falcon Heavy launches, multiple Dragon vehicles, and also at least one Mars Transit vehicle. Also, they'll need to design and manufacture environmental suits (nothing off the shelf will work for them, including anything in NASA's current inventory), rovers, and all the other things listed on that page.

There's another factor, too: with once exception, every human being who's walked on another world has been an extremely skilled pilot or naval aviator (and the one exception, Dr. Harrison Schmidt, was trained and rated on supersonic jets after his acceptance to the astronaut corps). This kind of background made them not just adept at flying planes and stuff, but also powerfully sharp observers and communicators, able to process lots of inputs simultaneously and make very fast and informed decisions in response to rapidly changing situations. Beyond being incredible pilots, most were also bloody brilliant--Buzz Aldrin, for example, holds a PhD from MIT in astronautics and his thesis, "Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous," formed the groundwork for much of NASA's rendezvous procedures during Project Gemini. Every person we've sent to plant those flags and make those footprints has been ridiculously skilled people, trained by the absolute best methods that could be devised by a battery of brilliant experts using effectively unlimited funds.

And contrasting that, Mars One is holding a public lottery and wants to sell the TV rights to the training and mission. It doesn't conjure up images of bold exploration so much as it does broken dreams and farce.

Their plans for mission sustainability--and, I'll of course grant that I don't know anything other than what's been publicly released, so maybe they've got a workaround for this--are contingent on other suppliers to provide transport. Assuming they can vault the initial hurdle and actually set four souls down on Mars, those folks' survival depends on the very, very nascent commercial space industry to keep them from dying a slow death. Maybe that's what it'll take to accelerate commercial space into viability, but I think it's going to come back to that oldest, truest adage of space flight: no bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Maybe I'm having such a hard time with it because it seems fantastic and silly and in real life, fantastic silly plans usually meet harsh un-funny ends; maybe the mention of TV automatically poisons my entire picture of the project. Maybe I'm just a pessimistic ass with a dried-up soul and a hopelessly atrophied sense of wonder. I dunno. But I can't help but see Mars One held up in comparison to the space race; the US spent more than a hundred billion 1960s dollars to send the best to the moon, and now we're gonna canvas the internet for folks who want to go to Mars and make a TV show out of it.

This just seems like an impossible project, and not the good kind of impossible project that ends in the triumph of overcoming blah blah blah. If they even manage a single launch, I'll eat my hat.

Catastrophic system failure. The electrical, heating, O2 production, or Water production systems fail in a non-repairable manner.

With the exception of available redundant systems, this would result in a fairly swift death for all the colonists.

Gradient issues:

Food, water, or O2 intake is greater than production.

These are issues that can be solved in the planning stage, but if they're not, they can also be solved on site in a variety of manners (including one of the crew sacrificing themselves for the good of the mission). I've already determined that if someone needs to do that, and I decide that it's going to be me, I'm going to go find out what it smells like on Mars...

Less morbid solutions include diverting electricity from non critical systems to electrolysis (for o2 issues), to lighting over the plants (to increase photosynthesis & by extension food production), or to driving more soil into the melting unit to produce more water.

Pinhole air leaks:

Over time, it is possible that the hab develops leaks. With proper planning, they can be easily tracked down and repaired. For example, there could be sensors on the outside of the hab that detect greater than normal concentrations of O2 in the atmosphere. That would allow you to both detect small leaks, and locate their general position.

Sabotage by a psychologically unstable crew member:

This is again something that probably would cause the death of the entire crew if it occurred. However, with extensive testing prior to launch, I think that it would be possible to weed out the people most likely to not be able to handle the remote environment. Additionally, if the person is identified on mission before anything occurs, there may be medical remedies available.

Disease:

There is a possibility of contracting some disease that is not able to be treated on Mars due to the lower standard of medical care available. This could effect any number of the crew, and has the potential to be all over the place with regards to how it risks the success of the mission. The best that can be done for this is good medical training, common medicines being made available via supply shipments, and sterilization of as much as possible prior to launch.

All of these dangers are real, but with good planning and redundancy, none of them guarantee the failure of the mission.

sonolumi, if that ends up being the case, I've been conned out of $38. Whoop di doo.

Even at this point, it's brought more discussion to the table about the viability of getting to Mars than anything else in my lifetime.

Even if it never actually happens, if I at least make it to the training portion of the selection process, I'll receive some very unique training and experience that I hope would allow me to make some sort of career out of advocating for Mars colonization.

Bas Lansdorp believes he's found a solution [to the problem of radiation expsoure[: "What you have to do is shielding, that means putting objects between the astronauts and the radiation.

"So we will make sure there's enough shielding on the spaceship. And on Mars we'll protect them by putting a large layer of soil on the surface of the planet."

Ummmm.... what? You're going to tell the colonists to dig a hole?

Is that their pitch? "Go to Mars! Live in a hole!" or "Be a hobbit! On Mars!"

From the pictures I've seen, I believe that the idea is that the rovers that are sent before the human colonists would cover the hab with soil.

The radiation on Mars isn't that bad anyways:

Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are similar to what astronauts experience in low-Earth orbit, which is lower than expected. It's deep-space flight that poses a bigger threat to astronauts traveling to Mars. via: http://www.businessinsider.com/astronau ... z2SZbGuwJe

A CT scan would give you ~25 times the daily radiation dose received on the surface of mars.

Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are similar to what astronauts experience in low-Earth orbit, which is lower than expected. It's deep-space flight that poses a bigger threat to astronauts traveling to Mars. via: http://www.businessinsider.com/astronau ... z2SZbGuwJe

A CT scan would give you ~25 times the daily radiation dose received on the surface of mars.

Fine - so these colonists would be getting approximately the equivalent of a CT scan every 25 days for the rest of their lives.

Whether its an odd-ball idea that is pure fantasy or the real thing, it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are still people out there with the pioneer spirit. If it wasn't for them, where the heck would we be?

Just my two-cents.

I agree, the people signing up definitely have the pioneer spirit. And true to form, they're getting scalped.

I've got plenty to lose, but humanity has orders of magnitude more to gain.

There is an end date to our species' time on this planet. Be it from a meteor impact, or the Yellowstone super volcano, or something else entirely, the only way for our species to survive is to be on more than one planet. Mars is the most logical choice, and Mars One is the only group with a plan that actually includes a launch date.

Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are similar to what astronauts experience in low-Earth orbit, which is lower than expected. It's deep-space flight that poses a bigger threat to astronauts traveling to Mars. via: http://www.businessinsider.com/astronau ... z2SZbGuwJe

A CT scan would give you ~25 times the daily radiation dose received on the surface of mars.

Fine - so these colonists would be getting approximately the equivalent of a CT scan every 25 days for the rest of their lives.

Sure, if you're standing naked on the surface. If that's the case though, I think you have plenty else to worry about...

Whether its an odd-ball idea that is pure fantasy or the real thing, it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are still people out there with the pioneer spirit. If it wasn't for them, where the heck would we be?

Just my two-cents.

I agree, the people signing up definitely have the pioneer spirit. And true to form, they're getting scalped.

I'm still trying to figure out how $38 is such a terrible rip-off... many people spend at least that much on a Saturday night at the bar. Sweet, you just blew $40 so you can wake up the next morning without a single memory of how you did it. I've already gotten a value return greater than one night of drinking from my $38.

Whether its an odd-ball idea that is pure fantasy or the real thing, it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are still people out there with the pioneer spirit. If it wasn't for them, where the heck would we be?

Just my two-cents.

I agree, the people signing up definitely have the pioneer spirit. And true to form, they're getting scalped.

I'm still trying to figure out how $38 is such a terrible rip-off... many people spend at least that much on a Saturday night at the bar. Sweet, you just blew $40 so you can wake up the next morning without a single memory of how you did it. I've already gotten a value return greater than one night of drinking from my $38.

And that's why it's called "getting scalped". Just a little off the top, you see. But think of it from their perspective... $38 times 30,000 applicants... that's a lot of nights of drinking.

Whether its an odd-ball idea that is pure fantasy or the real thing, it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are still people out there with the pioneer spirit. If it wasn't for them, where the heck would we be?

Just my two-cents.

I agree, the people signing up definitely have the pioneer spirit. And true to form, they're getting scalped.

I'm still trying to figure out how $38 is such a terrible rip-off... many people spend at least that much on a Saturday night at the bar. Sweet, you just blew $40 so you can wake up the next morning without a single memory of how you did it. I've already gotten a value return greater than one night of drinking from my $38.

And that's why it's called "getting scalped". Just a little off the top, you see. But think of it from their perspective... $38 times 30,000 applicants... that's a lot of nights of drinking.

I understand that , but they've already stated what they would do with the money if they don't reach their goals. I can't find the quote atm, but they said that they would donate all money to other space exploration endeavors.

I'm not going to get on your ass for thinking that I'm getting scammed; I suppose that could be the case (I can't imagine that there wouldn't be a huge backlash against the people behind Mars One if that ended up being the case though). Like I said in another post though, it's $38. I'm barely out anything, so I'm not concerned.

I'm kind of curious what the public is expecting to see at this point... everyone panning the program seems to expect that they should be able to see blueprints and budgets or something.

Even if Mars One executes exactly as they plan to, no one who isn't intimately involved in the project is going to see that level of detail.

And I think everyone should take a moment to remember that 10 years before we landed on the Moon, we couldn't even launch a rocket into space...

That's a fair response, honestly. Ten years prior to Apollo 11's landing, NASA was a fledgling agency and Project Mercury was still a few months from officially kicking off.

The skepticism from a lot of folks is good old fashioned Internet truculence, yes. However, remember also that at its height, Project Apollo and its associated programs directly or indirectly employed about 400,000 people and consumed 2.2% of the total federal budget (one source, though there are many others). A lot of people are viewing Mars One's goals through that lens: if it took that many billions to get twelve people to the moon, how much more will it take to get to Mars?

Our perception of space travel is colored by past missions. Mars One's estimate of a $6B mission seems ludicrously low in light of what other government-funded space agencies across the world have spent to accomplish far smaller goals. Costs will be lower than a government-run mission for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the notoriously porky nature of manned space flight (that army of 400,000 civil servants and contractors spread across North America didn't come cheap), but $6B still seems a little light. Looking at their technology page, they anticipate saving huge amounts of capital by operating as payloads on Falcon Heavy launch vehicles (which should, if all goes according to plan, be man-rated by design) and by using Dragon capsules in a variety of roles. Good for them. This is obviously predicated on Falcon Heavy being brought into operation on time, and solving the issue of actually landing on Mars (there's no method so far that's been tried that'll work for living cargo, for one reason or another, at least not without serious compromises in payload). This means they still will need to finance multiple Falcon Heavy launches, multiple Dragon vehicles, and also at least one Mars Transit vehicle. Also, they'll need to design and manufacture environmental suits (nothing off the shelf will work for them, including anything in NASA's current inventory), rovers, and all the other things listed on that page.

There's another factor, too: with once exception, every human being who's walked on another world has been an extremely skilled pilot or naval aviator (and the one exception, Dr. Harrison Schmidt, was trained and rated on supersonic jets after his acceptance to the astronaut corps). This kind of background made them not just adept at flying planes and stuff, but also powerfully sharp observers and communicators, able to process lots of inputs simultaneously and make very fast and informed decisions in response to rapidly changing situations. Beyond being incredible pilots, most were also bloody brilliant--Buzz Aldrin, for example, holds a PhD from MIT in astronautics and his thesis, "Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous," formed the groundwork for much of NASA's rendezvous procedures during Project Gemini. Every person we've sent to plant those flags and make those footprints has been ridiculously skilled people, trained by the absolute best methods that could be devised by a battery of brilliant experts using effectively unlimited funds.

And contrasting that, Mars One is holding a public lottery and wants to sell the TV rights to the training and mission. It doesn't conjure up images of bold exploration so much as it does broken dreams and farce.

Their plans for mission sustainability--and, I'll of course grant that I don't know anything other than what's been publicly released, so maybe they've got a workaround for this--are contingent on other suppliers to provide transport. Assuming they can vault the initial hurdle and actually set four souls down on Mars, those folks' survival depends on the very, very nascent commercial space industry to keep them from dying a slow death. Maybe that's what it'll take to accelerate commercial space into viability, but I think it's going to come back to that oldest, truest adage of space flight: no bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Maybe I'm having such a hard time with it because it seems fantastic and silly and in real life, fantastic silly plans usually meet harsh un-funny ends; maybe the mention of TV automatically poisons my entire picture of the project. Maybe I'm just a pessimistic ass with a dried-up soul and a hopelessly atrophied sense of wonder. I dunno. But I can't help but see Mars One held up in comparison to the space race; the US spent more than a hundred billion 1960s dollars to send the best to the moon, and now we're gonna canvas the internet for folks who want to go to Mars and make a TV show out of it.

This just seems like an impossible project, and not the good kind of impossible project that ends in the triumph of overcoming blah blah blah. If they even manage a single launch, I'll eat my hat.

Catastrophic system failure. The electrical, heating, O2 production, or Water production systems fail in a non-repairable manner.

With the exception of available redundant systems, this would result in a fairly swift death for all the colonists.

Gradient issues:

Food, water, or O2 intake is greater than production.

These are issues that can be solved in the planning stage, but if they're not, they can also be solved on site in a variety of manners (including one of the crew sacrificing themselves for the good of the mission). I've already determined that if someone needs to do that, and I decide that it's going to be me, I'm going to go find out what it smells like on Mars...

Less morbid solutions include diverting electricity from non critical systems to electrolysis (for o2 issues), to lighting over the plants (to increase photosynthesis & by extension food production), or to driving more soil into the melting unit to produce more water.

Pinhole air leaks:

Over time, it is possible that the hab develops leaks. With proper planning, they can be easily tracked down and repaired. For example, there could be sensors on the outside of the hab that detect greater than normal concentrations of O2 in the atmosphere. That would allow you to both detect small leaks, and locate their general position.

Sabotage by a psychologically unstable crew member:

This is again something that probably would cause the death of the entire crew if it occurred. However, with extensive testing prior to launch, I think that it would be possible to weed out the people most likely to not be able to handle the remote environment. Additionally, if the person is identified on mission before anything occurs, there may be medical remedies available.

Disease:

There is a possibility of contracting some disease that is not able to be treated on Mars due to the lower standard of medical care available. This could effect any number of the crew, and has the potential to be all over the place with regards to how it risks the success of the mission. The best that can be done for this is good medical training, common medicines being made available via supply shipments, and sterilization of as much as possible prior to launch.

All of these dangers are real, but with good planning and redundancy, none of them guarantee the failure of the mission.

This is a pretty fair assessment of at least some of the dangers... *if* the mission even *makes it to the surface*. Getting all the rocket bits up to mars (and down to the surface) largely intact is probably an even greater challenge than keeping a colony alive once you get it down there.

Humans are mighty resourceful buggers, and I think that if Mars One manages to land some colonists on mars they'll fight tooth and nail with everything they have to stay alive and deal with any eventualities that occur. They won't get the chance though if they either a) don't get off the ground in the first place or b) get dashed against the martian surface at a few kilometers a second.

This is a pretty fair assessment of at least some of the dangers... *if* the mission even *makes it to the surface*. Getting all the rocket bits up to mars (and down to the surface) largely intact is probably an even greater challenge than keeping a colony alive once you get it down there.

Humans are mighty resourceful buggers, and I think that if Mars One manages to land some colonists on mars they'll fight tooth and nail with everything they have to stay alive and deal with any eventualities that occur. They won't get the chance though if they either a) don't get off the ground in the first place or b) get dashed against the martian surface at a few kilometers a second.

I can totally agree with that. I think that the answer to a is funding (I really think money is the only thing holding humanity back from going to Mars... or really anywhere else we might want to go), and the answer to b is in testing, and repetition. If they use the same landing system for the structures and rovers that are sent to Mars before the colonists, then, while space flight is never entirely safe (what is?), we will be able to have a high degree of confidence in the success of the landing.

You're right though, and I don't deny it: getting to the point of launching anything is still a big question mark.

I will reiterate something I posted earlier: Mars One has already raised an order of magnitude more money in a few weeks than any other group with a plan to land on Mars ever has.

The main reason to doubt the success of any of this is the fact that there doesn't seem to be a team of people who has actually shown this to be feasible. Like, engineers. Yes, the project will need money, but if I had $6billion in a pile in front of me, I can't just ask it to take me to Mars. I feel that the reason they think it's doable is the same reason they don't know it isn't doable. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

One of MarsOne's representatives (Marieke Wagensveld - member of the MarsOne PR team) gave a presentation last saturday at the Aviodrome aerospace museum in the Netherlands.

Let's just say that I was less than impressed. I took some notes and will copy them in here.[...]

- A lot of research will be needed to establish the technical feasibility of the MarsOne proposal (What!? They haven't done that yet?)- To make the project financially viable an enormous media campaign needs to be initiated.[...]- MarsOne seriously expects that media exposure will be able to raise the US$ 6 billion needed for the first mission.[...]

The above is as far as the content of the presentation is concerned. Below you'll find my personal impressions:- The presentation was messy and ill-prepared. Bad thing for a PR officer.- The entire project looks highly unrealisitic IMO.- Very little technical details were given. Upon my asking the MarsOne representative had to admit that almost none of the details have been figured out; as indicated by the fact that a basic technical feasibility study has yet to be performed.

I don't think there's much there that I didn't already know, except that they admitted that they might find themselves in a situation in which resupply wouldn't be possible. (everyone knows that, but I don't think they've said it before)...

Oh, and subsequent missions costing 4bn makes it sound like they expect to spend ~2bn on R&D, comm satellites, and the rovers.

So, let me get this straight: global warming could increase the average temperature on Earth by a few (maybe a few tens of) degrees. So our solution to this is to move to a planet where the average temperature is around -55C, with variations between 27C and -143C? Even if we could terraform the entire planet to have everything Earth does, its still going to be farther from the sun, and thus just as cold. I just don't see how Earth could possibly get as bad as Mars is now, so I'm not sure what we're supposed to be gaining here.

the New York Times summed up the general feeling in a recent article that talked about the "significant skepticism" that Mars One "has raised in some quarters"

Heh, that's one way to put it. A bit more mild than I would put it, but I guess "significant skepticism" sums it up pretty well, since the NYT can't go full out and call it a damned scam without raising some serious libel issues.

But it is a scam. They might just be trying to raise awareness for a Mars mission, but given it's going to fail (and they have to know that), that seems extremely unlikely. Probably have the opposite effect, which is unfortunate. Not sure what the end-game is, yet, the few hundred thousand they've raised so far doesn't seem like enough for a money based scam, but I could be wrong.

It "has" to fail? It probably will. But what if these folks actually do go to Mars and survive the landing and actually build a primitive settlement? Say they can't produce enough food and begin to slowly starve? Maybe there would be enough sympathy for their plight here on Earth that we send them supplies, maybe even on a regular basis. I guess what I am saying is that it might force us Earthlings to commit to colonization.

Except for the fact that there's only certain time windows of opportunity to get to Mars in a reasonable time frame from Earth. Furthermore even in the most optimistic setting it would be 6 months before helped arrived.

Once on Mars you're alone, more alone than anywhere on Earth. If something fails there is no hope for help. You're dead.

the New York Times summed up the general feeling in a recent article that talked about the "significant skepticism" that Mars One "has raised in some quarters"

Heh, that's one way to put it. A bit more mild than I would put it, but I guess "significant skepticism" sums it up pretty well, since the NYT can't go full out and call it a damned scam without raising some serious libel issues.

But it is a scam. They might just be trying to raise awareness for a Mars mission, but given it's going to fail (and they have to know that), that seems extremely unlikely. Probably have the opposite effect, which is unfortunate. Not sure what the end-game is, yet, the few hundred thousand they've raised so far doesn't seem like enough for a money based scam, but I could be wrong.

It "has" to fail? It probably will. But what if these folks actually do go to Mars and survive the landing and actually build a primitive settlement? Say they can't produce enough food and begin to slowly starve? Maybe there would be enough sympathy for their plight here on Earth that we send them supplies, maybe even on a regular basis. I guess what I am saying is that it might force us Earthlings to commit to colonization.

Except Mars has a drastically reduced atmosphere, colonizing it is impossible with our current technology. How exactly are you expecting them to produce food?

The technology *IS* there, today. It is just a matter of exorbitant costs! A cost factor no nation can afford anymore as they did in the 60's 70's and 80's. I could see this actually working if they heavily "market" it franchise style; toys, fast-food themes, mugs, the "big brother on mars", spacy clothing line - you name it!. The way things develop in this day and age, every major "spectacle" is being marketed the crap out of it. So why not space missions? After all, people want to be entertained so they can forget their dull, repetitive life for a moment. For that they will fork over some cash. Same reason why people pay to go to the movies, pay for premium TV channels, pay for going to a football game.

Only difference is, that this time it's the real deal on mars, and not a movie with Val Kilmer ;-)

Sure there *will* be incidents and even deaths, as they were every time some civilization has colonized a different continent in humanity's past. My life-partner has been like nuts trying to push me to sign up for that, but in 10 years I'll be mid-50's and way past the physical fitness that'd be needed for this kind of task. In my opinion there should be an age restriction respectively physical fitness screening - which as i read, doesn't seem to be in place.But I fear most people who signed up for that, do not realize the psychological, social and emotional implications what it means to be ALONE with a handful of people in a biologically hostile and psychological/physically demanding environment for the REST of your life, until you DIE.

Let's imagine all goes exactly according to plan (seriously -- let's) and everyone arrives to Mars safe and sound...

What next?You've got just a few people; resources as finite as the stuff they bought with them, and let's say, conservatively, a good **30 years to live**...

What will they do?Every time you leave the pod, you waste air and other precious resources (which are, as far as i know, non-renewable on Mars)...There's only so much TV you can watch in a day before you go postal...Even if they are under the delusion that they will build things, there are no raw materials...How to get them, mining? Even a cursory look at the new Discovery show on the gold-diggers shows that mining is no small undertaking... Then what do you do with the ores you have? Are they shipping a smelting facility (could be kind of heavy)?

What about food?I worked on a farm as a teenager; i think they fail to realize the size of fields needed to feed people year-round...What about proteins? Nuts take an extremely long time to get, since they come from mature trees... As for meat, the easiest source of meat would be from swine, but swine eat *a lot*...

All this assumes that, for the next 30 years, the TV production company will go to the expense and the diligence of launching two massive supplies missions per month to Mars?TV producers don't exactly have the reputation of being faithful, rain-or-shine, committed people. What if the ratings go down? You only feed half the crew?

If this is not a hoax, it's scary how in-human people can be...(unless Douglas Quaid can find Quato in time to activate the Alien reactor and turn the whole planet into Tahiti heaven in minutes -- as long as tha mean Cohagen doesn't foil the plan -- or was it all an implanted memory?)